100%: the Story of a Patriot eBook

Peter had been urging McGivney to put an end to this
sort of agitation, and now the rat-faced man told
him that the time for action had come. There
was to be a big mass meeting to celebrate the Bolshevik
revolution, and McGivney warned Peter to keep out of
sight at that meeting, because there might be some
clubbing. Peter left off his red badge, and the
button with the clasped hands and went up into the
gallery and lost himself in the crowd. He saw
a great many “bulls” whom he knew scattered
thru the audience, and also he saw the Chief of Police
and the head of the city’s detective bureau.
When Herbert Ashton was half way thru his tirade, the
Chief strode up to the platform and ordered him under
arrest, and a score of policemen put themselves between
the prisoner and the howling audience.

Altogether they arrested seven people; and next morning,
when they saw how much enthusiasm their action had
awakened in the newspapers, they decided to go farther
yet. A dozen of Guffey’s men, with another
dozen from the District Attorney’s office, raided
the office of Ashton’s paper, the “Clarion,”
kicked the editorial staff downstairs or threw them
out of the windows, and proceeded to smash the typewriters
and the printing presses, and to carry off the subscription
lists and burn a ton or two of “literature”
in the back yard. Also they raided the headquarters
of the “Bolshevik local,” and placed the
seven members of the executive committee under arrest,
and the judge fixed the bail of each of them at twenty-five
thousand dollars, and every day for a week or two the
American City “Times” would send a man
around to Guffey’s office, and Guffey would
furnish him with a mass of material which Peter had
prepared, showing that the Socialist program was one
of terrorism and murder.

Almost every day now Peter rendered some such service
to his country. He discovered where the I. W.
W. had hidden a printing press with which they were
getting out circulars and leaflets, and this place
was raided, and the press confiscated, and half a dozen
more agitators thrown into jail. These men declared
a hunger strike, and tried to starve themselves to
death as a protest against the beatings they got;
and then some hysterical women met in the home of
Ada Ruth, and drew up a circular of protest, and Peter
kept track of the mailing of this circular, and all
the copies were confiscated in the post-office, and
so one more conspiracy was foiled. They now had
several men at work in the post-office, secretly opening
the mail of the agitators; and every now and then
they would issue an order forbidding mail to be delivered
to persons whose ideas were not sound.

Also the post-office department cancelled the second
class mailing privileges of the “Clarion,”
and later it barred the paper from the mails entirely.
A couple of “comrades” with automobiles
then took up the work of delivering the paper in the
nearby towns; so Peter was sent to get acquainted
with these fellows, and in the night time some of
Guffey’s men entered the garage, and fixed one
of the cars so that its steering gear went wrong and
very nearly broke the driver’s neck. So
yet another conspiracy was foiled!